Does pro-Israel extremist group exist?

By · June 2, 2008

A new right-wing extremist group that claims to be pro-Israel has some German bloggers wondering if it exists.

The autonomous National Socialists for Israel launched its Internet site in May. The site applauds Israel’s “2,000 years of struggling to survive” and claims that the notoriously anti-Semitic Reinhard Heydrich, an organizer of the “Final Solution,” was a pro-Zionist nationalist.

In marking Israel’s 60th anniversary, the German group calls for an end “to hatred aimed at the Jewish people” and urges support for the return of Jews to “their ancestral homeland.” It also criticizes the anti-Semitic views of other neo-Nazis who continue to spread myths about so-called Jewish conspiracies, and suggests that if Jews were so powerful, Jewish leaders in Germany would not be so “cowardly.”

The group, which urges that the uniqueness of the Holocaust be recognized, says it plans to bring Israeli flags to future neo-Nazi marches.

Some German bloggers and news media are asking whether the group is far right or far left – or whether it exists. They note that the organization has never held a public meeting.

Others have said the group is not all that radical, since some mainstream neo-Nazis already have proposed to work together with Jews against “Islamo-fascism.”